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Saturday, December 30, 2017

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint Version 4.0 Release Candidate (RC) has arrived! This means that if no new bugs are found, this will very likely be representative of the final release.

Changes since beta 3

Playtesting over the holidays proved that the wheel spin trigger
mechanism doesn’t exactly generate random spins on the Mac version. This
resulted in players consistently landing on high dollar wedges,
seemingly in the same exact spot.

To remedy this issue, I am introducing a new spin mechanism that computer-randomly generates where it lands.
This applies to both the Windows and Mac versions. While this means
that the pulse animation has to go, there are important benefits to this
spin approach:

- Every single wedge has an equal chance of
getting landed at. (For the $10,000 wedge and side Bankrupts, divide by
the odds by 3.)- You can safely double-click the wheel, eliminating that troubleshooting problem.- The game can now, via code, detect where the wheel landed on.

The
last point is very important, as it could lead to breakthroughs in
future versions of the project. For now, I’ve leveraged this capability
into what is discussed on the next bullet point.

You may have noticed that the mystery wedge toggles were broken in previous
betas. Rather than fix the bug, I’ve eliminated these toggles in favor
of automatic mystery wedge removal. If you click the
bottom-left mystery button while the wheel is on a mystery wedge, that
mystery wedge will automatically be removed while revealing the $10,000
or Bankrupt! Clicking the x next to the indicator will restore both
mystery wedges.

Transferring totals now zeroes out everyone's round score.

The bonus round interface has been reworked for improved
visual clarity. The active side now has an outline, while the inactive
side is now gray. Also, if none of the contestant’s consonants and vowel
is in the bonus round puzzle, the letter selector will become red.

Fixes an issue that caused settings to look like they reset when transitioning to the puzzle board

The How to Use slides on the Mac version now uses Mac screenshots.

The project (except for graphics by wheelgenius) is now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

For those still using v3.2 stable, now’s a good time to hop onboard to
the v4.0 train. It’s feature complete, and I made an effort to scrub as
many bugs as I could find.

The final release with the video guide is still on track for the first half of January 2018.

Update (Jan 9): The release candidate is no longer available. The download links have been replaced with version 4.0 final, which is essentially the same thing as the release candidate with very minor fixes.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Bingo Master Board PLUS Version 2.1 is out. The most notable change is that I rewrote the VBA using "Option Explicit". I'm not really sure why this is important other than it's good programming practice, but hey, I followed through.

Other changes include:

Various alignment adjustments

You can now display the number of Bingo balls drawn. This may be more useful for Bingo players than the amount remaining.

Bingo Master Board PLUS is now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Missed out on the previous betas? Here are the beta 1 and beta 2 release notes.

Beta 3 is ready for testing, and it focuses on one major new feature: bonus round support.
As you probably already know, the bonus round in Wheel of Fortune is when the winning contestant tries to solve one more puzzle with a limited amount of letters for a chance at a big prize. My PowerPoint implementation attempts to streamline this process. Access the bonus round by cycling through the round tabs.

Click RSTLNE to reveal those letters in the puzzle.

The contestant then chooses three consonants and a vowel (four consonants if he/she has a wild card). Use the letter selector to input these letters. You can remove letters if necessary with the spiral arrow button.

Now click these letters to reveal them in the puzzle, if they exist.

Once all the letters are up, the contestant has ten seconds to guess the puzzle. Click the timer on the bottom right to start the countdown.

Click the timer again to reset it back to the beginning.

This is the last planned beta and marks the feature freeze for version 4.0. The final release, targeted for the first half of January 2018, will focus on bug fixes, last minute optimizations, and a new video guide. I'd like to hear how the bonus round works for you and any bug reports if found.